Who knew that you will have such a great business idea? Well, you did, apparently. And your idea is so great that everyone will want to buy a copy of your product. Everyone who hears about it, of course.
But how do you get people to discover your great product? You don’t have the huge advertising budgets of your competitors, after all. If these things sound familiar, read on to discover several inexpensive gadgets that will help you spread the news about your innovative products.
First of all, you will need a smartphone. Almost everyone has one, isn’t it? But you need a different model, one that can speak business.
Let’s start with the basics: your phone must include a GPS. This will help you get to business meetings on time, even when you are away from home. Most GPS software solutions will also be able to suggest alternatives whenever there is a traffic delay.
Then, your phone should help you get easy access to customer data. This means that it should have a large screen and lots of pixels on it. Phones with a screen resolution of 800 x 480 pixels or less are terrible, so avoid using them.
Smartphones that don’t have calendars are useless, at least for business owners. You need a phone that helps you organize your days. Fortunately, there are several calendar apps that will do the job, provided that you’ve chosen a phone with a large, high-resolution screen.
A great smartphone should also help you with social media marketing, allowing you to log into Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and then post news, reply to comments, and so on. Sure, you could do all these things with your computer, but a smartphone prevents you from wasting time while you are waiting for the next sales appointment.
Now that we’ve gotten the potential smartphone issues out of the way, it’s time to focus on the devices that can add a lot of value to it.
One of the most important gadgets on your list should be a portable credit card reader. You need to set up a system that allows you to accept credit cards anywhere in the world. Fewer and fewer people – including business owners – carry cash, but pretty much everyone has one or more cards these days.
If you purchase a smartphone credit card reader you will be able to close more deals on the spot, and thus significantly boost your profits.
You will also need a portable scanner. Still, now that smartphones are powerful enough, you can get away without purchasing one, by installing one of the great scanner apps – available both for iOS and Android – that will turn your smartphone into an intelligent scanner.
Apps like these are powerful enough for most people’s needs, so you’ll save a lot of money by only purchasing the software equivalent of the scanner.
The last on our list is a portable printer. Sure, you could ask your potential client to print an invoice for you, but it’s much more professional to have it printed in your car.
The good news is that some portable printers are able to produce great output and their costs won’t break the bank.